When offering tickets to an event, a ticketing system will typically make the selected seats temporarily unavailable to other purchasers before the transaction is completed. If the transaction is not completed within a predefined amount of time, the transaction is cancelled and the selected seats are made available to any purchaser. Where a ticket sales rate is relatively high, it may be difficult to find available seats in the most desired location, and oftentimes the only available seats are in a location that is less desirable, and a purchaser may temporarily encumber the less desirable seats in case the event becomes sold out and there are no available seats left.
However, there may be multiple purchasers who all encumber seats that are less desirable to them, and desire to find available seats that are more desirable without giving up the encumbered seats they have already located. However, in many ticketing systems, giving up selected seats to search for better seats results in the selected seats being returned to the pool of available seats that may then be reserved by other purchasers.
While implementations are described herein by way of example, those skilled in the art will recognize that the implementations are not limited to the examples or drawings described. It should be understood that the drawings and detailed description thereof are not intended to limit implementations to the particular form disclosed but, on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.